FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT COP LAND - PAGE 2

Moviewise, this has been a summer of excess: excessive budgets, explosions, plots involving hijackings and aliens, and most of all, an excessive number of would-be blockbusters. Now that the season is winding down, moviegoers are primed to take a breather from all the action, but if you thought choosing among the low-key fare would be any easier, think again. Movies that played January's Sundance Film Festival alone could fill your docket for months: "Box of Moonlight," "Love Serenade," "Star Maps" and "Kiss Me Guido" opened in Chicago Friday.

In "The Peacemaker" (R), terrorists steal from a Russian train nuclear weapons headed for dismantling under a disarmament agreement. Then they stage a train wreck and nuclear blast to make it look as if all the weapons were destroyed. Dr. Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman), a nuclear scientist and acting head of the White House Nuclear Smuggling Group, realizes the train wreck was a ruse. She teams with an intelligence officer played by George Clooney to track down the key terrorist before he can unleash destruction on the West.

The winding career path of Robert Coughlin, a former Chicago police officer who was fired after a shakedown, has led to a new spot on the public payroll. Coughlin now is a projects administrator in the city's Aviation Department, said department spokeswoman Monique Bond. "He oversees laborers and landscaping." Coughlin previously had been director of driver services for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, heading the division that administers license tests for motorists and truck drivers.

A woman and a Chicago police office were taken to a hospital after police said she spit in the officer's eye early this morning during her arrest for reckless conduct in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side. Police responded to a disturbance near the intersection of Richmond and Fillmore streets where Jessica Williams, 25, and another woman were arguing, according to Harrison District Police Lt. John Andrews. As officers approached the women, Williams fled on foot into moving traffic and officers followed her and began to arrest her for reckless conduct, he said.

In good movies or bad, Sylvester Stallone has the face of a wounded hero: rigid and seething, boyish yet resolute, bristling with buried hurts. When we see him on the screen -- and we've seen him in mostly weak or dramatically trivial movies for the past decade -- we expect him to react violently, to strike back hard. Other movie characters may brush-off or instantly react to insults and injuries, but Stallone stores them up, saving them for a final explosive reaction. "Cop Land," one of the best movies Stallone has made since his 1976 breakthrough, "Rocky," buries that latent heroism in a wall of flab, flesh, good will and slow, shambling deference: In the persona of a lovable small-town sheriff named Freddy Heflin, whom many residents in the little New Jersey community of Garrison either take for granted or pick on. Because Freddy is Stallone, we suspect that, sometime before the movie's end, that swallowed-up anger will come ripping out. Which it does -- to surprisingly moving effect.

On Thursday afternoon, 13 rebels climbed atop high-tech transportation gadgets and threw caution to the wind. Hours after it was announced that a software glitch on the Segway self-balancing scooter could cause the two-wheelers to unexpectedly reverse direction, a group of brave tourists and locals forked over $70 each to City Segway Tours for a chance to grab the handlebars, lean forward and zip along the lakefront. Although Segway Inc. urged people to stop riding the vehicles until the problem was fixed, the riders were more concerned with mastering their machines than with potential danger.

City officials told Englewood residents and business owners Tuesday that plans to acquire their property to build the new Englewood District Police Station have been put on hold indefinitely because of a public outcry, and alternate sites will be considered. About 20 people with a stake in the neighborhood around the 6200 blocks of Ashland Avenue and Justine Street gathered outside of the Public Building Commission meeting Tuesday, waiting to hand Mayor Richard Daley a letter expressing their concern about what they said was a lack of community input in choosing the site.

Two days after an apparent suicide attempt, former Chicago Police Deputy Supt. William A. Hanhardt was arrested Thursday as he was released from Highland Park Hospital. Hanhardt, in a wheelchair, was moved by deputy marshals to a psychiatric unit at Bethany Hospital, which has a contract with the Metropolitan Correctional Center to provide inpatient medical services, authorities said. Hours before he was scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday to charges he masterminded a jewelry theft ring, Hanhardt was taken to Highland Park Hospital after his wife found him unresponsive at his Deerfield home, authorities said.

In "City backs off cop-station land" (Metro, Aug. 9), representatives of the Public Building Commission are quoted as having been "shocked" that Englewood residents oppose the site chosen for a new police station. The commission was shocked at the opposition because it has made no effort to accept or seek community input in the planning process. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) members on the block to be demolished and from other unaffected blocks came out to get the station moved, and to voice their belief that we should have a say in what the government does in our community.

"Walk the Line" FOX, $29.99 Who's in it: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin Recap: The early days of Johnny Cash are told in typical bio-pic fashion, capturing all the great beats of his life--his love of June Carter, the drugs, the money, the music--at the slight expense of story. Best extra: The best of the 10 deleted scenes is a charming bit that features a cameo from Johnny Cash's real son, John Carter Cash, as a DJ, with Johnny (Phoenix) thinking he's broken the only copy of the single he just recorded with Sam Phillips.